How to Overcome Indecision | Nuala Walsh | TEDxUniversityofSalford

[Music] a 14th century Parable tells a story of a really hungry and thirsty donkey that stumbles across a bucket of hay and some water bewildered the donkey stares at both and can't quite decide which to have first the water or the hay time passes the donkey still can't decide eventually the poor donkey dies from chronic thirst and starvation or is it actually from chronic indecision fast forward to the 21st century and how many of us sometimes feel like that indecision donkey we make a big deal out of something small we don't think about the future

consequences of our actions and we become paralyzed at the thought of making a mistake well as a behavioral scientist with 30 years in corporate life I've studied many different books and articles on decision- making most of them will tell you how to make a better or a smarter decision very few will tell you how to make a decision any decision when you're feeling mentally stuck but what if by simply understanding why you can't make a decision you can learn to overcome indecision well anyone can become a confident decision ninja by changing their perspective by by

reframing how they think about that particular indecision and all you need is three simple science-based techniques but first let's look at the nature of indecision itself nearly 6 billion Google searches tell us it's not necessarily the most complex of decisions that baffle us it can be what to wear what to watch on Netflix just as much as it can be whether to speak up against wrongdoing whether to change your job change your partner or start start a new business it's different for everyone young or old rich or poor my 82y old mother finds things more

difficult than I do and sometimes vice versa but what is absolutely consistent across humankind is that crippling fear of anxiety and making the wrong mistake and that craving for certainty everybody feels this at some stage in fact some of you may feel it now raise your hand if you're currently grappling with a decision of any kind oh I see quite a few a pocket of indecision about indecision over there perhaps well hold that hold that idea and that decision in in your mind it's understandable that this can feel overwhelming because at the end of the

day there's a weight of expectation that you place upon yourself after all scientists say that you make at least 35,000 decisions every day 95% of those are made unconscious iously and then there's also the weight of expectation that other people have about you as a parent or as an expert in your field people expect you'd have the answer to everything and in business it's often the most confident and decisive leaders that get recruited rewarded and recognized as consumers we pay billions every year for expert judgment and advice it may feel safer to be indecisive and

not make a call but it really does carry consequences whether it's Financial ethical or social but the good news is that once you understand why you get into this mental Maze of indecision it's easier to navigate a way out and it could be any host of different reasons you may simply not have a strong preference for Rome or Paris on your holiday or to hire Betty or Benny you may feel that you've got too much choice or it's worth too little choice you have so much time that you're languishing or so much time that you

that you're just panicking you may feel Under Pressure you feel morally conflicted you feel everybody's watching you all of these reasons affect your ability to prioritize and then there's personality you're a nice person you want to keep everybody happy and we all know how that story ends and many people are proud they want to make the perfect decision and equally that causes just as many issues sometimes like the indecision donkey you are convinced that only one answer either the water or the hay is the perfect answer and so when you're in this mental Maze of

indecision what determines how long you stay there is actually three inner voices the thought that this decision of mine it's just too big I can't deal with it or it's just so far in the future I don't have to deal with it or even it's just too hard I don't want to or I'm not going to so what do you do some people might say walk the dog sleep on it use your intuition phone a friend but science will point to something else something more effective reframing so what is reframing reframing is something that you

do unconsciously all the time without even thinking about it it is a psychological technique where you change your perception of a particular situation for example a problem is often frame reframed as a as a as a challenge a challenge could be reframed as an opportunity in your youth a drunken text might even have been reframed as a learning experience there are many of these reframes that people do all the time and the logic is pretty clear if you turn something upside down inside out and look at it differently you gain perspective you gain a distance

from the particular situation and hence an opportunity to move forward and in exactly the same way if you take these unconscious ideas that your dilemma is too big it's too far it's too hard and you consciously make yourself feel that it's smaller sooner and easier you will find a way through H the this maze so let's take the first of these the idea that it's too big what I call the proportional frame now my niece is overworked and underpaid it's a first job and she has completely magnified out of all proportion this will I go

or will I stay decision so much so that she's avoiding the decision altogether and sitting on the fence now I understand it I really do in my career I had a job offer and I deliberated delayed so long that they actually rescinded the offer and took it back this is not a good place to be so how can you adopt this way of thinking well you reverse the thought so you take something that's big and you make it feel smaller just like anyone would do with any large you know project you in effect you mentally

shrink the decision so my ninja niece deconstructs the problem instead of thinking of the top 10 or 20 most important factors for consideration just look at the top three and then critique that idealized outcome maybe this job isn't so perfect after all less autonom longer commute and by deliberately finding the imperfections in something you reduce the consequentiality and the magnitude of it in your mind making it easier to deal with and then of course a decision shared is always a decision shrunk this shrinking strategy works for all kinds of decisions in 1969 NASA put man

on the moon that was a huge decision or was it the astronauts will actually tell you that it was a series of thousands of micro moments of indecision that eventually became decisions and right across industry we also see this researchers from UCLA and Cornell tested the effect of reframing on Savings in decision is it really possible that say that telling a consumer to save $5 a day rather than $150 a month which is of course the exact same thing that really make a difference to people's behavior well it did by a factor of four four

times as many consumers enrolled in this particular Savings Program why because it's easier to think small about big decisions and it's easier to think about days rather than months and when thinking about days even though it might be easier it's not necessarily better which leads us to the temporal frame and again this idea that the rewards are so far in the future that it's just too much for today's sacrifice we all know we ought to save for retirement scroll less smoke less Network more and protect the planet but we are shortterm present oriented impatient people

we want everything now we live in a culture of now instant feedback instant wealth instant weight loss and so we procrastinate I'll solve that problem tomorrow I'll think about it tomorrow the only problem with that is of course that everyone's thinking about tomorrow tomorrow is the busiest day of the year and it never gets done and you stay longer in that in that maze so how do we shift this thinking this reverse framing well first of all remember that idea that you have that dilemma think about it and ask yourself how will this decision feel

in two weeks two months two years or two decades that's quite hard but it starts to shift you thinking and getting out of the present mode scientists will say to make it easier visualize yourself two weeks two months two years two decades ahead and when you do that what you're actually doing is you're bringing your future self back to today so you can make the decision in the moment and again scientists have tested this you know with virtual reality avatars age progressed photos and what they have found that it does impact behavior and that people

have indicated Hast and intention to eat less cheat less smoke less and save more and we see this we see this in sports professional golfers use the visualization technique when they're facing a tricky shot and they teach it in clinics and in hospitals therapists use it with patients undergoing Rehabilitation programs when they're struggling to see their future s and organizations can use it with this very difficult will I speak up or B decision in my own experimental research I found that 92% of employees indicated a willingness to speak up but when it came to it

only 99% took the first step companies make a mistake they often make big appeals to corporate culture corporate culture is a long-term process we are of course short-term present oriented impatient people they are better off trying to trigger employ in the moment to solve a problem today so that they visualize themselves helping a colleague or their company in the moment rather than procrastinating all of this is underpinned by emotion which is of course the third uh frame this idea that it's too hard that idea that you're thinking of maybe the consequences you feel are too

final maybe you feel they're irreversible and that the stakes are too high and you fear this regret humiliation and shame of making a mistake I see this everywhere I from CEOs right across the Spectrum you see people bearing their heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich afraid to make a decision not making a strategic decision or a merger decision or an investment decision so how do we reverse the frame how do we make something hard easier how do we make ourselves feel more comfortable making what we perceive as a risky decision well we positively

frame the decision and let's be very clear a negative decision will never be positive a redundancy or an end of Life Care decision will never be positive this is about changing your perception of that particular decision so let's look to one of Google's most popular searches uh which is will I break up with my partner and even the cling of that question feels quite binary break up or don't break up and that can be a mistake so rather than looking at things in a binary way either or expand optionality think about all the Alternatives that

you may have now Simon and garuna will have you believe that there are 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover I'm not recommending that I suggest perhaps two or three and even before you get this this point you know you can take a take a holiday see a therapist have a trial separation have an open marriage there are plenty of options to consider and but the point of doing this and having more options is that you reduce the sense of fear finality and for boing when you're afraid to make that particular decision and then think about

the stories that you're telling yourself if you choose to tell yourself that 90% of people who break up end up with AB in abject misery rather than having a shot at the fairy tale Happy Ever After ending it's predictable whether you'll procrastinate and keep your head in the sand all of this is rooted in the work of Martin seligman's positive psychology self-narratives and also Daniel canan's gain Framing and nowhere did the world see more powerfully the effect of positive framing than during Co governments Regulators medical practitioners all over the world encourage citizens to wear masks

with a simple appeal masks save lives it was an appeal to hope to emotion and to protecting family and in many cases it worked it shifted people out of indecision now if you're still heads scratching with that dilemma of yours and thinking I'm still not sure what I'm going to do about it I'd like to share with you my own technique that always works for me and I call it the probability test and it's three very simple questions and the questions are if I want if I make this decision what's the worst thing that will

happen and then I ask what is the likelihood of this happening and if that happens what will I do about it and the reason that I think that this works is because it replays the three frames I've already visualized the worst case scenario and thought about it now I've gone there and I've concluded that the chance of disaster is probably unlikely so I've Shrunk the probability in my mind of this big decision and because I've created some optionality and choice around what I would do I feel more positive about it I feel more confident and

able to move forward and therefore I've actually just made it easier at the end of the day this is all about perspective and perspective can be changed anybody can get out of this Maze of mental indecision by understanding why you get in there in the first place and by using these principles of reverse Framing and it can be done in seconds indecision is just a transitory phase think back of all the decisions you've made in your life your 20s your 30s your 40s and I'm stopping there and most of them worked out pretty well so

the final reframe is that of indecision itself if you choose to change the idea that indecision is a paralyzing problem and look at it as an opportunity to gain a broader perspective you really will make not just a decision but a better decision and a smarter decision thank you very much